*Dear longtime subscribers, thanks for hanging in there while I took a couple of years to rethink a publication covering what I think are the most important topics happening in education today. That’s why the date reads 2020—that’s how long it took me! Hope you enjoy the brand-new Bell Ringer. If you find it valuable, please tell your friends.
On a hot September day back in 2015, I found myself sitting around a conference table of scientists at Vanderbilt’s Kennedy School here in Nashville, Tennessee. I was a relatively new education reporter, and had been sent out by an editor to “do some stories on special education.” But I was not expecting to hear what they told me.
Here was the big scoop: eighty percent of students in special education had a reading disability, most often dyslexia, a biologically-based brain condition that made reading and writing difficult. It had nothing to do with intelligence. Dyslexic brains weren’t “broken,” just merely wired in a different way. For the vast majority of those kids, the effects of the disability could be greatly reduced if they were taught to read in a way that followed scientific evidence—a way that most schools didn’t use.
I was confused. Schools didn’t teach reading in the way science said was best? Why? Each piece of information they gave me was like a small explosion in my mind, pop, pop, pop. Air conditioning pumped into the conference room, yet I couldn’t stop sweating. My notebook from that day is littered with big question marks.
“Most special education students have dyslexia???”
“Adults struggle to read and grew up thinking they’re stupid??”
And then came maybe the biggest scoop of all: some of the kids who struggled to read didn’t have dyslexia—they were just suffering from the wrong kind of reading instruction, causing them to repeatedly fail at reading, making it look like they had a reading disability.
What did I know about learning before that day? To be honest, it’s fuzzy, but it went something like this:
I thought that some children were smart, and others were less smart, and that affected how well they read.
I thought kids “picked up” skills like reading through repeated exposure to books, like a cold.
I thought kids were learning more if I could see it with my own eyes, through artistic projects or performances.
I knew that poor children often performed worse than rich ones, though the explanation on exactly why that was the case was unclear.
I thought learning needed first and foremost to be more exciting and fun to be effective.
In other words, I had never given much thought to how people learn. Here I was, an education reporter, and I had no idea how people learned anything!
The Vandy scientists put me on a different path. “Studies show that nearly every child can learn to read,” they said. “Some kids seem to learn to read as if by magic [more on this later], while those who struggle can learn through the right kind of teaching. How they are taught, what they are taught, and how much they practice matters a great deal.”
At the conference table, somehow both freezing and sweating, I had one of Oprah’s “a-ha moments.” And it changed everything.
Welcome to The Bell Ringer.
This is a weekly newsletter and monthly online magazine covering the most exciting and important ideas, research and knowledge about the science of learning—a growing body of research from the fields of cognitive science, psychology, and the developmental sciences describing how humans learn. Think of the science of learning like a set of general principles surrounding how humans learn things, not hard and fast “rules” set in stone. These principles can influence how teachers teach, how schools think about things like curriculum, and how parents can help kids who are struggling.
It’s written and produced by me, Holly Korbey. I am an education journalist and author. Since that day at Vanderbilt, I have been writing about teaching and learning for national publications, and much of my reporting focuses on trying to answer different versions of a single question—what are kids learning in school, and how do they learn it?
I’m going to continue doing that reporting. But I also wanted to create one site to learn more about learning, and you’re here. I did it for two main reasons: I find the science of learning fascinating and think you will, too. I also want to take my own little hammer to the myths and fantasies that seem to permeate education—including the ones in my own head—and shatter them, then replace them with scientific evidence on how we learn things efficiently and effectively.
Learning myths, like the ones I once believed, are so pervasive throughout the education system, they’re often woven seamlessly into how we think about school. They give parents, teachers and the public the wrong impression about how we learn and what kids should spend their time doing in school. When myths get implemented in classrooms and in our minds instead of evidence, they often produce the side-effect of making everyone feel bad. Teachers feel bad, because they’re working so hard with little positive result. Parents feel bad, because maybe it’s their fault their children can’t learn well. Kids feel bad and think maybe they’re lazy or not intelligent.
Here’s a great example of one of those myths: learning styles.
Learning styles is the quite popular belief, even among teachers and parents, that everyone has a certain style in which they learn best—ever heard someone refer to themselves as a “visual” or “auditory” or “kinesthetic” learner? That’s learning styles.
The learning styles belief is that a child with a kinesthetic learning style, for example, might learn his multiplication tables best if he was shooting hoops while answering 9x8. A “visual learner” might learn more about the War of 1812 from a YouTube video than reading about it in a book.
But research has shown repeatedly that learning styles do not exist. While people may feel they prefer one way of learning to another, their preferred style doesn’t lead to more or better learning.
A recent study reveals how belief in learning styles has the potential to put limits on what students are capable of. One hundred percent of parents, and 85% of teachers in the study agreed that people learn information best when it’s presented in their preferred learning style. Then researchers interviewed those people about how they viewed students. In one experiment, parents and teachers were asked who was more intelligent and who was more “sporty”—a “visual” learner or a “hands-on” learner? Teachers and parents named the visual learner as more intelligent, and the hands-on learner more “sporty.”
In a different experiment, even young children rated visual learners as more intelligent than hands-on learners.
But learning styles aren’t real. Researchers said their results show how belief in learning styles can help form wrong beliefs about students’ abilities that can limit their potential.
This is the space where The Bell Ringer steps in.
I think parents, teachers and the general public deserve to know more about the science of learning. It gives important clues on how we can teach and learn better, and that in turn can change people’s lives.
You may have read stories or heard podcasts like Sold a Story, journalist Emily Hanford’s reporting on how schools often don’t use the research to determine how to teach kids to read, resulting in many American kids with weak reading skills. Or my own stories and those of colleagues on the science of effective math instruction—a growing body of evidence that points to better, more effective ways of teaching kids math that many schools don’t know about.
These stories about reading and math are vitally important to you, your children, and the public interest; but they are only the beginning.
The Bell Ringer is here to shine some sunlight on both the myths and the best evidence, and share it with you. The science of learning is an exciting frontier with big implications for school, work and home. In my reporting, I have found that teachers and school leaders who learn about the science of learning change how they teach, and students end up learning more. When parents and the general public learn about the science of learning, we can make schools better for all kids.
Why subscribe?
The Bell Ringer offers research and reporting on the science of learning. “Hot takes” on the latest X (Twitter) battle? Rarely, if ever. I’ll also be wading into the challenges and roadblocks to progress, talking with researchers, educators and experts in the field who are doing empirical research and interacting with students, aiming to bring you the most trustworthy information I can get my hands on.
Friday newsletters are free. Because great reporting can’t happen without great support, for $6 per month readers get unlimited access to the monthly issues centered around a theme—reported stories, profiles and Q&As with researchers and experts. Paying subscribers will have unlimited access to every story as well as the comments section, where the conversation can continue.
At the heart of the matter, we can do better for kids. Let’s get started.